New Delhi: If you overlooked the twominute aerial show put out by Delhi’s real daredevil, Akshay Kumar, entertainment was at a discount at Ferozeshah Kotla on Saturday. Bollywood’s hottest hero slid down a high wire about 100 feet in the air and landed on the other end of the ground. Matronly women craning their necks to catch a glimpse of his high-risk stunt were disbelieving. “Ise to Twinkle ka bhi khayal nahin,” one of them uttered loudly to her companion. Barring that and the spectacularly polluting fireworks, there was little to enjoy in the first 90 minutes of the IPL evening. Anybody can have a bad day.But judging by Saturday’s display, Team Jaipur didn’t even look they belonged. They seemed to be the IPL version of Derby County in EPL.The crowd patiently waited for Virender Sehwag to end the ennui. But the Najafgarh Nawab looked like having left a half-eaten ice-cream in the dugout. He electrified for three balls, left on the fourth. Then the match headed for the prosaic and the predictable. Despite the one-sided Kotla encounter, the three-day old IPL has given enough teaser trailers of its power to fundamentally alter the way cricket is played and watched. Brendon McCullum’s 158 off 73 balls and Michael Hussey’s 116 off 54 balls have ensured that. In the Chennai-Punjab game, 25 sixes came off in 40 overs. That’s more than one six every second over. Akshay and company have shown that cricket can synergize with Bollywood and emerge as a parallel entertainment industry. There’s a world of merchandise waiting to be tapped. Today’s billion-dollar baby could well be tomorrow’s mega billion-dollar brat. The government would like to enjoy the rub-offs. Is it far-fetched to think we could have a union minister of cricket one day? The arrival of real big money has also prompted a total re-orientation of “country before anything” principle as some Australian players have shown. Even Kevin Pieterson and Collingwood has given a mouthful to ECB for not letting England’s players turn out in IPL. IPL might just see a confusion of sporting loyalties among fans. Jagdeep Singh, a fan on a website summed up the emotional muddle: “It is difficult for me to decide where I belong. I am Punjabi. Born in Bengal. Studied in Chennai and working in Hyderabad.And my favourite player is Sachin Tendulkar. I am yet to decide which team I support,” he wrote. As yet, though, there is no sign of the artificial rivalry that the television promos have sought to hype. In one of the ads, an attractive middle-aged woman feigns molestation in the elevator because the real ‘victim’ belongs to a rival cricket club. In another such ad, a boyish sardar deliberately refuses to offer a seat to a doddering old man when he is discovered to be supporter of a rival club. The sub-text of the ads seems to be that even feigning sexual abuse and not following basic courtesy is fine when it comes to supporting your own club.What a way to construct inter-club rivalry! On evidence of the first few games, it appears that the city-based rivalry that the IPL has sought to conjure with rupee power on television could take some time to fructify. The other day, a section of the Bangalore crowd cheered McCullum’s breathtaking shots and even clapped rival captain Sourav Ganguly’s bowling. Some confused fans even waved India flags. Thankfully, the poor uninformed souls were not stopped with the terse message: Only IPL team flags allowed here. Hyderabad’s Andrew Symonds is one of the stars of the Indian Premier League